So often have I stumbled upon Facebook profiles or living
creatures that proudly proclaim their being ‘secular’, in the
‘Religion’ section/in a context of that, and I have always
wondered, “Isn’t ‘secularism’ an attribute that characterizes
states in their approach of treating their citizens equally
irrespective of their religion?” In the light of that,
extrapolating it to individuals, a secular person would simply mean
one who treats humans equally irrespective of their religious
affiliations, or the lack of that.

Having earned some reasonable understanding of the Sanatan Dharma
(commonly known as Hinduism), I can vouch for its motto, “सर्वे
भवन्तु सुखिन: सर्वे सन्तु निरामया: सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यन्तु मा कश्चिद
दुःख भाग्भवेत” that is, “May all be happy, may all be healthy, may
everyone possess goodwill towards everyone else, may no one
suffer”. Evidently, this verse testifies the inclusive nature of
Sanatan Dharma where there is no discrimination on the basis of
religion. It is the message of Universal Brotherhood, that this
verse so strongly carries. “वसुधैव कुटुम्बकं” i.e. “The whole world
is family” further corroborates this concept of Universal
brotherhood. And, realizing that mind has this unique ability to
conceive notions, and they will differ from one mind to
another, Sanatan Dharma provides another masterly verse, “एकं सत्य
विप्राः बहुधा वदन्ति” meaning “It is the One Truth that different
learned people express differently”, one that elegantly removes any
basis of conflicts, to provide a ground for the other two verses.
With this in place, the debate of whether or not God should
be worshipped in form or formless, is rendered meaningless. It’s
one God, omniscient, omnichronous and omnipresent, and as Sanatan
scriptures proclaim, whichever form you invoke God in, you reach
Him in that form.

With the above insight, one can safely conclude that anyone who
believes in these core nuances of Sanatan Dharma,
inherently satisfies the pre-condition of being secular. So what’s
innate, what’s inherently there, need not be injected, or
artificially transplanted, as doing so would not only be
unnecessary, it would be preposterous in the sense that it assumes
a lack of the same in the subject. Clearly, before the advent of
any ‘religion’, the concept of Secularism could not have existed.
Modern terminology gives the word ‘pagans’ for the believers in
Sanatan Dharma for those times, ‘Hindu’ being barely a millennium
and a half-old word. The advent of Zoroastrianism, followed by
Buddhism and Jainism also didn’t call for a need for ‘Secularism’.
In fact, in this land which we now call India, under the emperors
who traditionally believed in Sanatan Dharma, Buddhism, which was
essentially an extension of Sanatan Dharma’s principles, spread and
prospered. With localized and sporadic exceptions of usurping the
religious freedom of Sanatan Dharma adherents for short spans of
History by emperors who had rested their faith in Buddhism, there
are no major long-standing conflicts recorded by historians. Same
can be said about Jainism too, for Buddhism and Jainism, both were
an elaboration of moral guidelines and a deep dive into
philosophical aspects of life ranging from sufferings and its
causes to Ahimsa. Buddhism embraced and elaborated on the
Karma-principle of Sanatan Dharma. Neither of them was in real
conflict with Sanatan principles.

2000 years ago, with the advent of Jesus Christ, a new
faith took birth - Christianity. In the pre-renaissance
era, Christianity spread in Europe. The most fundamental
beliefs of Christianity included salvation by faith, not by
actions, a point which is contrary to the Karma principle.
Christianity rests on “Jesus Christ as the only path to God and
eternal salvation”, again, contrary to “one Truth, many
manifestations” theory of Sanatan Dharma. Bible, the holy book of
Christianity, proclaimed the Universe having come into existence
some 4000 years before Christ, and how “God created the world in 7
days”. This was again in contradiction to what Sanatan Dharma texts
had proclaimed, that the Universe undergoes cyclic creation
(expansion) and destruction (contraction) over timelines that range
into Trillions of years – a parallel to the modern String Theory of
Cosmic Evolution. While the advent of Christianity spread the
message of Christ’s love and faith in the areas that were dark, it
also became a cause of conflicts with those who didn’t believe in
the “only” truth doctrine. It so happened because to spread the
message of Christ was considered obligatory for Christians.

1400 years ago, the world saw the rise of another belief
system – Islam. Based on “There is only one God, and his name is
Allah, and Mohammad is his prophet (last or not, Islam is
divided on this issue) and Quran is the verbatim word of Allah as
revealed to Mohammad, which no one can ever alter.” Quran comes
down heavily on idol-worshippers (the pagans/Sanatan Dharma
adherents) and Jews and Christians, with the latter termed as
people of the book, but whose book has been corrupted, and
labelling all of them under the blanket keyword of ‘kafir’ or
infidel/disbelievers. And, to establish the rule of ‘believers’
over the entire world remains the ultimate goal of Muslims, as per
the guidelines provided in the Quran and supplementary texts,
Hadiths.

While Jesus is traditionally believed to be celibate, Islam’s
prophet Mohammad had at least 11 wives, the first of them Khadija,
a rich business woman who was some 15 years older than Mohammad who
became the owner of her business after marrying her, to Ayesha, the
daughter of Abu Bakr, who Mohammad married at the age of 54, when
she was 6.

While we know Jesus to have lived the life of a saint with
miraculous powers, the life of Mohammad was of a warrior who,
following the commandment of Allah in his dreams, initiated an
armed movement to make people believe in what was revealed to him
as the only true faith. The revelations to Mohammad as documented
in the Quran are very detailed. For example, they include explicit
permission from Allah to make the women who were wives of war
prisoners as your own wives, not to take back the gifts given to a
wife while abandoning her, not to marry those women whom your
father has married (unless it’s already so happened), not to marry
your own mother or the wives of your own son, eat any flesh except
that of swine etc. Allah’s directives include never trusting any
Jews or Christians and following only what’s revealed for that’s
the only true wisdom. These commandments come with a promise that
Allah will cast fear into the hearts of those who do not believe,
and a scary hellfire is reserved for them, while for those males
who believe, there is paradise with ‘incentives’.

With Quranic wisdom openly challenging pre-existing beliefs, ground
was paved for religious conflicts. Consequently, following
centuries witnessed Crusades to liberate the holy land and Jihad to
make people believe in Allah. The homeland of Sanatan Dharma too
got a taste of it and after centuries of holocaust and suppression
of religious freedom under various Islamic rulers, followed by
relatively liberal British rule, the land got independence. In the
meantime, Europe and America had seen a new concept,
“Conflict of Science and Religion” where the
advent of Modern Science had challenged the dogmas of Church and
had even resulted in many scientists facing persecution at the
hands of Church. However, with the evolution of a ‘modern’ world,
one tired of the bloodshed and conflicts that marred what we term
as “medieval era”, the concepts of “religious tolerance” had made
Christian dominated nations adopt ‘Secularism’ as an obvious
solution, where state would not discriminate among citizens on the
basis of religion. Though this was in contrast with Muslim majority
nations, which were essentially Islamic in nature.

By the time of Indian independence, the region where
Sanatan Dharma had always been followed until just few centuries
ago, which ranged from Iran (Aryaan) in the west, through Kandhar
(Afghanistan), Tibet (Trivishtap) in the north, to Malaysia and
Indonesia in the South East, had shrunk to the modern day
India. All this while, while Sanatan Dharma survived the
onslaughts, its flavours like Buddhism got largely eroded from
their cradle land, while they prospered elsewhere, in China,
Thailand, Japan etc. But, the independent India, in the guise of
democracy, was an oligocracy and an aristocracy where the strings
of power were in the hands of those who were educated under an
education system conceived by British ‘visionary’, Thomas Babington
Macaulay. The education system was proposed by Macaulay with the
sole intention of destroying the Sanatan roots of Indian culture
and value system and a sense of identity that came with it. While
the division of British India was agreed upon on a religious basis
by educated Indian leaders (although reluctantly by many of them),
the ‘need’ for making India ‘Secular’, which was an obvious
inference of the Macaulayized system of Education,
resulted in India being declared a Secular nation. This came with
total ignorance of the very basics of Sanatan Dharma, whose being
the driving force would have eliminated the very need for
secularism, as we agreed upon in the beginning of the article.